PreSonus Notion is famed for outstanding playback sounds, speedy workflow, compatibility, and ease of use, and it’s the only notation software that works with a standalone iPad app. It offers powerful features for scoring to picture. And it costs a fraction of what those slow, bloated, overcomplicated scoring programs soak you for. That’s why Notion 5 is the best notation software for composers, performers, producers, worship teams, arrangers, orchestrators, educators, and music students.

Hear Your Music Played by World-Class Musicians.

Notion gives you by far the best playback of any notation product, including orchestral samples recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra. But that’s just the beginning of its playback features.

Interactive Tools Make Entry Fast and Intuitive.

Enter notes with ease using Notion 5’s interactive fretboard, keyboard, and drum pad. Choose chords from a generous chord library (enhanced in version 5), and create your own chords.

Truly Cross Platform.

Create a score in Notion for Mac or Windows—then continue to work on it in Notion for iPad. Or start with the iPad and transfer to your Mac or Windows computer for in-depth editing. No other notation software can do this.

Picture This.

If you compose to picture, Notion 5 is your new best friend.

Film, video, and TV composers have specialized needs that just start with a synchronized video window. Notion’s video window includes a new timecode view, and you can add hitpoints and select the volume, frame rate, and start time. That’s all important stuff but not uncommon.

However, other scoring software falls short when it comes to supporting modern video file formats. In contrast, Notion can handle all of the most important formats, including mp4, WMV (Windows only), H.264, mpeg, mov, avi, m4v, and 3gp on Mac and Windows.

Furthermore, Notion can handle video while in 32-bit or native 64-bit mode for Mac and Windows—and Notion is the only major scoring program that handles video natively on 64-bit Windows.

Plays Well with Others.

In addition to working well with VST instruments and transferring to and from iPad, Notion offers support for standard file formats—and ReWire.

Notion 5 offers compatibility with other applications in several ways. It can import and export Wave files, including upsampling for export, and can export the audio for each staff or bus as an individual stem and import it into PreSonus’ popular Studio One® DAW. Want to share audio files online? Simply upload them to SoundCloud™ from within Notion!

Notion’s ability to export in a variety of modern video formats is one of several features that make it a great choice for scoring to picture. It can also import and export Standard MIDI Files, MusicXML files—especially useful for collaborating with people who are using other notation applications—and Arobas Guitar Pro tablature files (v. 3 to 5).

Last, and far from least, Notion supports ReWire as a host and slave in 64-bit or 32-bit mode. During playback, with Notion as the host, you have full access to Notion’s playback and performance features using the computer keyboard or MIDI keyboard. As the stereo stream from the slave application arrives at Bus A in the mixer, you can alter gain, panning, effects, and so on, just like any other instrument.

As a slave, Notion follows the commands of a host application but. Notion can send up to 32 streams to the host application, plus start and stop playback and audition new notes. In fact, you may even forget that Notion is in slave mode until the host begins a playback operation.

For an extremely potent, yet easy-to-use combination, ReWire Notion with Studio One. Now you can take advantage of Notion’s superior playback sounds and notation capabilities, including video scoring, plus Studio One’s in-depth editing, processing, and (with Studio One Professional) mastering and digital release features—including direct upload to PreSonus’ Nimbit direct-to-fan online marketing and promotion platform. Of course you also can save your scores as PDF files!

Capture MIDI Parts and Edit Them with Your Score.

Recording and editing MIDI data is easy in Notion. Viewing MIDI and standard notation together makes the experience special.

Capture your MIDI performances better than ever before in Notion. Choose keyboard, guitar, or drum entry and dial in exactly how Notion will follow your playing. Enter in real time or in step time. Then view your MIDI performance data in Notion’s Sequencer Staff.

Better yet, use the Sequencer Overlay, which allows you to see notation and MIDI performance data on the same staff. Edit each individual note’s velocity, duration, start point, and end point using drag-and-drop. For precise values, double-click each note and enter in the numeric values as well. With this feature, Notion combines the power of the MIDI sequencer with the clarity of standard notation in a unique and powerful way.

Overdubbing MIDI performance data is great for adding expressive controllers, recording key switches, or trying that line one more time, and it’s easy to do in Notion. You also may want to merge recorded MIDI data and new events. Notion allows you to overdub your MIDI recordings in either Merge or Replace mode, giving you full control over the performance.

Every Bit Helps.

Here’s a bit of good news: Notion 5 can run with 64-bit or 32-bit addressing on Mac and Windows. It works great with Windows 8 touchscreens and Mac Retina displays, too.

Take advantage of your 64-bit computer and operating system’s ability to address more than 4 GB of RAM and watch the speed and performance of Notion and VSTs and sample libraries increase!

You can also run Notion in 32-bit mode on a 64-bit computer for compatibility with other products. And in version 5, Notion adds Mac Retina display support and Windows 8 touchscreen optimization.

Don’t Just Play Your Music: Perform and Produce it, Too.

Notion 5 enables you to perform your scores live and even offers features you expect in a digital audio workstation—including PreSonus plug-ins!

Notion lets you play back a score with playback following metronome marks—and does so better than any of the competition thanks to its superior sound library.

But with Notion, you also can perform your score live, using NTempo mode, continuously controlling tempo (and volume if using a velocity-sensitive MIDI controller) by tapping keys on a MIDI controller or computer keyboard. The faster you tap, the faster the tempo. A playback marker shows you where you are in the score. Performing in NTempo mode has many uses but it’s especially great for music students and educators.

Notion also lets you import audio files and mix them with your score using the built-in software mixer, which includes eight buses, panning, inserts, subgroups, and more. Process your audio with the built-in reverb, guitar-amp simulator, and Native Effects™ EQ, compressor, and limiter plug-ins from PreSonus’ Studio One DAW.

Yes, Notion is a professional notation program but it’s clearly much more!

Score a Copy of Notion 5!

By now, you should have the notion that PreSonus Notion 5 is a fast, modern, efficient, easy-to-use, great-sounding notation program—and it’s far more affordable than its slow, bloated, old-school competition. Notion is available in U.S. and British English, French, German, Japanese, and Latin American Spanish.

So head for your PreSonus dealer, visit the online PreSonus Marketplace, or contact the good folks at Hal Leonard Publishing and score your copy of Notion.